


Chocolate, Coffee, Tea

by parkadescandal



Series: it starts with a melody [3]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Dates, Fluff, M/M, Music as a Grand Sweeping Metaphor for the Connection Between Two Hearts, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Freeform, Symphony of Sorcery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 15:50:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17164832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parkadescandal/pseuds/parkadescandal
Summary: Sugar-Plums, and other Suites for the season.





	Chocolate, Coffee, Tea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CheckersXIV](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheckersXIV/gifts).



> a gift for the lovely [CheckersXIV](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheckersXIV/pseuds/CheckersXIV), who asked for some domestic wintertime fluff. Hearts in tune are free to sing, and all that, it's cool, I'm cool, I'm not screaming or anything. 
> 
> this has literally no bearing whatsoever on the story, but for my own purposes it takes place in the same universe as ["A Body of Knowledge You Can't Give Up"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16194197).

“I think the thermos is really just for show,” Sora says, looking at it with a quizzical expression. “It’s enchanted, after all.”

They’ve snuck out to Twilight Town on a particularly chilly day on the pretense of running some errand for Kairi. 

“It shouldn’t take too long, anyway,” Riku says. 

“Um. I think that’s the opposite of the point. I don’t think we can come back for a while yet.” Sora pockets the thermos. It peeks out from his oversized coat.

Weeks before this and weeks after they’d even started talking about whatever feelings they’d accidentally tripped up into admitting, they’d gotten around to trying to tell Kairi by raising their linked hands at her.

 _“_ Ah,” she’d said, after piecing it together and giving her congratulations. “I had kind of wondered.” 

And that would have been that, but they remained entirely too static for her liking, apparently. 

“I know you’re not doing it on purpose,” she’d said, “but you’re starting to make me feel like everyone here is cramping your style. Stop looking so guilty all the time and go get some air. Don’t come back until you’ve nuzzled somewhere without being terrified you’ll get caught.”

“ _Nuzzle_?” mutters Riku afterwards, trudging through the town with a bemused expression.

“Don’t be so serious.” 

The town is set up to glow in the evening, lights and banners and so many other decorative accoutrement to celebrate the holidays. Looking at the twinkling lights spread throughout while sufficiently disguised in coats and hats and other heavy winter wear was almost, for a moment, just the same as it had been when they were growing up, with one major exception--it had never gotten even remotely this cold on the islands. 

“I’m _freezing_ ,” Sora says, mostly to his scarf. “Can’t we--”

“Wait,” Riku interrupts, holding out his hand like there’s incoming danger. Sora furrows his brow at him. “What’s that music?” he continues. Something is playing as soundtrack to the ice rink that’s set up in the town square. 

“I don’t remember what it’s called.” 

“Neither do I. But it’s so _familiar_.” 

“Mm,” Sora says absently, reaching for his hand, but Riku blazes ahead without noticing, possessed by a concentrated urge to solve this mystery. Before Sora can protest, he sees him fumbling with some munny and shoving it into the hand of the lady in charge of entry for the rink before impatiently waving him along. 

“I can’t think of why I would know it,” Riku says distractedly. The song had started out with a soft harp, and as it went on it got louder, and louder. It even sounded kind of gooey and romantic for a minute until it moved into a triumphant little march, so loud they couldn’t have heard one another even if they had tried to talk. Even though the song has long since ended, Riku still taps the rhythm of that march with his fingers into Sora’s forearm, nodding to a time signature that wasn’t even there. 

They are both learning the hard way that they don’t actually know how to ice skate. Sora grips on to Riku’s shoulders with desperation--he’s not sure if he can even bruise anymore, there’s no space left on his body--then something else comes on the speakers that startles Riku enough that he jostles him. In a panic, Sora claws at him and pulls them both down to icy humiliation. 

“It’s not like we’ve been in a lot of situations where we’d hear something like that,” Riku mumbles to himself while they stand to watch a street performer grandstand for a crowd. Sora bobs up and down on his feet trying to generate enough energy to warm himself. He leans over to shove his icicle nose into Riku’s arm but he moves away at the last second, sending Sora stumbling.

“It’s driving me _nuts_ ,” Riku says as they trudge away. He stops dead on the sidewalk and stares at the ground--Sora walks directly into his back. He starts to speak again, then thinks better of it, and looks over to Sora, who is doing his level best to school the look of disappointment on his face. “I’m sorry. I know I’m being a buzzkill.” 

“No, it’s fine,” Sora backtracks. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s just...find something else to do. I’m not ready to go back yet.” 

“Okay,” Riku says quietly. 

“Look--I want to look in here. I’m sure we can find something nice to bring back the others,” Sora says, pointing at the little marketplace set up in the streets of town, full of things to buy like snacks and hot drinks and scarves and other trinkets to give as gifts. There are lots of little stands where vendors have created everything they’re selling. They pass by stall after stall until a glitter to the left catches Riku’s eye, and once again he plows over elsewhere with single-minded purpose. 

The display shows off dozens of glass ornaments. They’re thin, unnaturally elongated, in the shape of flowers, and tall grasses, and mushrooms, all with deep colors that reflect in the light. The tent behind sparkles green. 

“In the style of art deco,” the woman at the stand says helpfully after they’ve stood around to admire it for a moment. As if in a trance, Riku reaches over to one in the shape of a droopy looking flower as she says with pride that she’s made them all by hand. They walk away with several of them, Riku still transfixed with one he holds gingerly in one hand.

“I’ve seen something that looks like that somewhere too,” Riku says, once again looking straight ahead so intently that he doesn’t notice the way that Sora’s shoulders drop by degrees. 

“That’s interesting,” he rallies, but before he can complete the thought, a light bulb comes on. 

“ _I’ve got it_ ,” Riku hisses suddenly. “In the dreams--when we saw the King, before he was the King, in the tower. The Sound Idea. It sounds like the music I heard from the book when I had to go find it.” 

“Oh,” Sora says. “Yeah! There was music, wasn’t there. But it wasn’t what we heard earlier. At least, not for me.” 

“It wasn’t?” Riku says with a note of urgency. 

“No,” Sora says slowly, looking over at him with concern. 

“Are you sure?” 

“I mean, I’m pretty sure, but. Who knows?” Sora looks over to find him crestfallen, the droopy flower looking impossibly sadder as he lowers his hand. Sora reaches over to take it from him. “Do you wanna… Do you wanna show me? So I can hear it too?” 

Suddenly they’re sneaking back into the tower and sliding into Yen Sid’s study to pluck the right musical score from his bookshelf. In a second, the enchantment settles them elsewhere, where the moon makes everything glimmer just like it did at the stand with the glass ornaments. It’s still, for a breath. 

“That’s strange,” Sora says. “The music is so much clearer now. I don’t remember being able to hear this much of it where I was. It was--” 

“Oh,” Riku breathes. “Oh. I get it now. I hear it better now, too.” 

For the first time all evening, he smiles, then extends an arm. Sora falls into it, and he leads him arm in arm through the symphony. 

“I think I’m the happiest I’ve ever been,” Riku says as he drags him down to take a seat at a snowdrift. He smiles as he watches Sora’s eyes light up, overflowing with happiness--for him. “I’ve been doing so well that I can’t help but think that something is going to take it all away from me sooner or later.” 

He quells the expression of concern he sees creeping up on Sora’s face by reaching over to touch his arm. 

“Who knows. Maybe that’s true.” He shrugs, and flashes him another reassuring grin. “But now I see that I have so much in my corner. My friends, the King, all the others we’ve met...and you. I’ll never be alone again. But it’s up to me to remember that.”

“Of course you’re not. But I can always help remind you, too.” 

They sit for a moment in silence, music crashing in like from a soundsystem at perfect volume. Riku lifts up his head to show off the sentiment settling in on his face. 

“I hear this and it’s undeniable proof that you and I are connected,” he says. “And I’m not worried anymore.”

Sora flings his arms around him, curled up with his nose shoved into his chest, and grips tighter when he feels his hug reciprocated, with a chin on his head. 

“That’s awesome,” he breathes. “But I’m still freezing.” 

“Oh, wait,” Riku says, shifting around without letting go until he comes upon the thermos they’d carried around with them the entire time. “Maybe this’ll help.” 

They do their very best to split tiny cup after tiny cup without disengaging from one another, only spilling a little bit, to be fair. 

“Wait, wait,” Riku says, nearly upending another little capful of cocoa onto the ground. “This one’s new,” he says, smiling absently. “This song is new.” 

If the other one had taken a turn toward the romantic, this one ran circles around it. At first it could almost have sounded sad, but as it went on it only got stronger. Brooding, and confident, a breathless decrescendo--then layered over with a resolute melody that works in tandem with the original to send it off with a shimmer that sounded just like the way it felt to cast light magic. 

It’s ages before they stop admiring the music enough even to think about disentangling themselves from one another to go home. 

**Author's Note:**

> The original song is ["Waltz of the Flowers"](https://youtu.be/o6R6thWee6g), the first little section of the Nutcracker suite that plays on the _Dream Drop Distance_ OST. (No, I'm not done being jacked up about it yet, thank you.)
> 
> Because I'm a disgusting romantic, the new song is the first [Pas de deux](https://youtu.be/EMQ8b3OPZOo)\--the dance between the Prince and the Sugar-Plum Fairy. 
> 
> perpetual thanks again to [pineovercoat]().


End file.
